WITH THREE MAJOR new industries preparing to move in, these are heady
times in St. Francis County.

Slowly fading are the memories of the 1980s, a decade in which
Forrest City, the county seat, lost more than 2,000 manufacturing jobs,
assuring the county a consistent spot atop the state unemployment chart.

Then there was the social and political turmoil that plagued the
town, beginning in 1984 when two masked men broke into the home of Wayne
Dumond, who was awaiting trial on a rape charge, and castrated him.
Dumond's testicles later turned up in a jar on the desk of County
Sheriff Coolidge Conlee, who himself ended up in prison on extortion and
racketeering charges. Conlee died in April 1990.

In between those publicity-generating incidents surfaced frequent
media accounts highlighting racial tension in the county.

It all added up to a public relations nightmare.

But, like a phoenix, Forrest City is rising from the ashes. Its new
incarnation may make St. Francis County the state's next economic
success story.

"To be able to recruit major facilities like we've done in
light of all that, I think, just proves the stamina and the character of
the community because some of those are tough images to overcome,"
says Forrest City Mayor Danny Ferguson.

The comeback began more than three years ago when an aide to
then-Gov. Bill Clinton called Ferguson and Perry Webb, executive
director of the Forrest City Chamber of Commerce, to see if the city was
interested in construction of a federal prison.

At the time, the town's manufacturing sector was stagnant. A
1985 strike at Sanyo Manufacturing Corp. underscored conflicts between
management and organized labor in Forrest City, casting a pall over any
attempts to recruit new industry.

Ferguson and Webb saw the prison as a way to diversify Forrest
City's economy with a business that would be recession-proof, but
they had to have support.

"You don't really know what the response of the
community's going to be when you propose a prison, so we held a
public hearing," Ferguson says. "Out of 300 people, we had two
hands go up against it, and so at that point it just gave us a direction
to go."

The support for the project was a sign of something else.

"That was such a point of unity for us that had not been seen in
Forrest City in so long," says Weston Lewey, associate publisher of
Forrest City's newspaper, The Daily Times-Herald and a former
chamber president.

Webb says Clinton "hand-carried the concept of putting in
federal prisons" through the Lower Mississippi Delta Development
Commission. U.S. Sen. Dale Bumpers and former U.S. Rep. Bill Alexander
joined in the political persuasion. In 1991, Forrest City found out it
had been selected for the prison, which is expected eventually to employ
as many as 1,000 people and funnel $12.9 million annually into the local
economy.

Although the state's politicians initiated the prison idea,
Forrest City residents and business leaders played a major role in
keeping the idea alive. They flooded the Bureau of Prisons with
encouraging letters, and they went to Washington to lobby key people.

Even after Forrest City had been chosen, the encouragement campaign
continued. One farmer, who operates a peach orchard next to the intended
prison site, wrote the bureau to welcome the prison to his neighborhood.

Ferguson says it was this kind of down-home sincerity that paid off
for Forrest City in getting the prison and, more recently, in recruiting
Dixie Foods Co., a subsidiary of Doskocil Cos. of Hutchinson, Kan., to
bring in a meat-processing plant that will open by November and employ
about 185.

The mayor and Webb led the effort to woo the Doskocil
representatives, hosting a gourmet lunch at a private residence upon
their arrival, sending them off with baskets of hand-picked peaches and
generally bending over backward.

"I think we really put a good recruiting effort on them,"
Ferguson says. "With the state's highest unemployment rate
over here, we're probably a little hungrier than some other
communities in the state that are doing a little better than we
are."

In between news of the prison and Dixie Foods' announcement,
Wal-Mart Stores Inc. announced plans to build a Wal-Mart Supercenter in
Forrest City that will employ about 360.

Forrest City now has to contend with growing pains, some of which
will be costly. But, as Webb says, these are "good problems."

The city plans a $3 million bond issue to finance water and sewage
system expansions needed to accommodate both the prison and Dixie Foods.
That's in addition to more than $300,000 the city already has
invested in both projects to bring them to fruition.

Despite Forrest City's hard times and a relatively modest annual
operating budget of $4 million, the city has been able to "sock
away some money" while maintaining the level of city services,
Ferguson says. This gave the city some leverage in securing its new
industries.

Webb says Forrest City assessed its situation around 1990, and that
led to changes. For example, before any further industrial recruiting
took place, an effort was made to strengthen existing relations with
businesses such as Sanyo.

In 1990, a delegation from Forrest City went to Japan to thank the
company for its commitment to the town. Today, Webb and Ferguson say
relations with the company are stronger than ever, and Sanyo is credited
with helping persuade Doskocil that Forrest City is a good place for
industry.

Perry says Forrest City's leadership also underwent an attitude
change on its way back up.

"A lot of Delta communities have the attitude when they go to
Little Rock, 'Well, what have y'all done for us today?'
In my opinion, the difference is Forrest City doesn't have that
attitude any longer. Now it's, 'What are we going to do for
ourselves today and how can you help us attain that?"

Whatever the secret of Forrest City's new direction, people in
the community agree there's a new spirit in the air.

Lewey says people are talking about opportunities. People seem more
willing to take risks by investing in real estate and expanding
businesses.

"For a while you just didn't hear that kind of talk around
here," she says.

"It's given people some semblance of hope," says Kersh
Hall, managing editor of The Daily Times-Herald. "Our economy has
been stagnant so long."

Last week at St. Francis County's unemployment office, that hope
could be seen in the faces of some 700 residents who streamed in to fill
out a preliminary application for a job at Dixie Foods.

Back in 1989, when almost one out of four county residents was
unemployed, the mayor was quoted as saying the county was looking for "little sparks in a dark tunnel."

Now, St. Francis County can look forward to a floodlight instead.

COPYRIGHT 1993 Journal Publishing, Inc.
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